July 14, 2009
a brief brush with civilization
*Edited with pictures: click on the links or go to the gallery at bottom*
It’s a funny thing, but after 5 weeks in the jungle, you start to realize how unclean and messed-up things became after man arrived and started wrecking havoc on untamed nature. Civilization has its own dangers, sometimes a lot crueller than those of the wild, but we’re just so used to them that they don’t bother us anymore. Two incidences this past week to illustrate what I mean:
Animals in the jungle are usually running in one direction: away from you. That’s usually the opposite of what we want, especially when we’re trying to catch them, but when it comes to large cats and snakes, its really a blessing in disguise. At any rate, you’re pretty confident that no animal in its right mind would seek out humans and attack them. We’re just that scary (ha!). This rule doesn’t hold in a village of people. There, people keep animals as pets (namely, dogs) and the abundance of human and animal cohabitants creates an environment where animals are no longer afraid of their two-legged counterparts. So dogs, chickens, snakes, frogs, cockroaches, scorpions (etc etc) all live together in unhappy harmony. Unfortunately for me, the home I was staying in (we all shacked up with a local family for the week…more on that after I finish this story) was at the bottom of a hill, past a house which had a pair of skinny, mangy (and probably rabid) dogs. Daytime doggies were fine (who knows where they were, probably wandering around the village), but come nighttime, they turned into savage beasts. If they were locked behind the gate, they would bark and growl at you as you walked passed, with their beady little eyes glowing in the dark like some demon from hell. That really freaked me out. One night, I was walking back to the house alone and was slowing inching along the path, hoping the dogs wouldn’t get too crazy. It was pointless, cause they still barked and growled like mad, and I got to a point where I thought it would be wiser to turn back and wait for some other people to walk with me. As soon as I turned around to head back up the hill, I swear I heard them right behind me, so I didn’t even think and just RAN. The farther I ran from the dogs, the closer they seemed to be, almost right at my heels and stilling barking and growling all the way. That 25 meters or so back up the hill was probably the scariest 10 seconds I’ve ever experienced, I totally thought I was going to die (ie. get bitten and get rabies). I think I scared all the other students when I charged back into the patio area where we eat/hang out. But when we finally went back down, we (the 3 girls who live down the hill) took 3 guys with us, armed with sticks. The dogs were locked behind the gate. In retrospect, they probably had been the entire time and I was just freaking myself out, but I wasn’t about to stop and check when I thought I was getting attacked by rabid dogs. It all seems less scary and more stupid (on my part) now, haha.
By God’s grace, for the 4 weeks that I’ve been in the middle of the jungle I’ve been both safe and healthy. Given that there’s such potential for uncleanliness here, the camps are uber-sensitive about washing hands with bleach water, etc. But back in town, rules get more lax, all supposeduly because things are more “civilized”. And so of course, that’s when I get sick: in a village. It could’ve been something I ate, something I picked up on my hands….dunno. But something I definitely noticed was that the first few days, there was no bucket of bleach water for washing up before meals. And unsurprisingly, after I got sick, said bucket appeared. After a day of sleep and some Ciproflaxin (antibiotics), I felt mostly back to normal, and now I’m totally fine. Praise God that it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could’ve been (same w/ the dogs).
Those were the two most exciting things this week. So…onto more mundane details: the village of Buenos Aires is lower in altitude than Base Camp, but it happens to sit right on the side of the mountain, so that if you look out you can see an entire range of valleys and mountains scattered across the horizon. There are some breathtaking views, some that can be seen from the main road, and even though its “lower”, its still high enough that we were literally living in the clouds. Mists would roll in and at first I thought it was smoke or dust from the road, but realized pretty soon that it was just a cloud was passing through. They don’t call this a cloud forest for nothing. I got pretty lucky in terms of accomodations. The family I stayed with was one of the wealthier ones, evident by the fact that they owned a truck. I got my own bed/bedroom to share with another student, with an attached bathroom that had a flushing toilet and shower. Given, the water was only on for a few hours per day, but the one time I did manage to catch the shower when the water was running (I didn’t know how to ask since my Spanish is nonexisitent…) was like heaven. Base Camp showers are way to cold to stand under (this one was still cold water but not as much), but this one was amazing and I actually got to rinse my hair properly.
The food wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. Strike one against it: there was absolutely no peanut butter. I LIVE off of peanut butter and tortillas for breakfast (so yummy…) and was deprived for a week. As soon as I got back to Base Camp today, I loaded my lunch tortilla with peanut butter. We did have chicken, quite a few times actually, but only one was it actually cooked in a way that tasted good (fried). Usually it sat in a puddle of oil and detracted from the novelty of having meat. There was a slightly different variety of food though, which was good (less beans, more eggs, more potatoes). The best meal probably was one breakfast where we got fresh mango, pineapple, watermelon and orange. Yummm.
I slept a lot in BA. Or at least assumed a (mostly) horizontal quite often. I blame this on the hammocks that were there. After a morning of hiking and sated with lunch, we’d usually retire to the patio and lie in the hammocks all afternoon, reading or listening to music. They are soooo comfortable, enough that I want to get one and hang it in Spelman next year. Wouldn’t that be sweet? All the froshies would come to our room cause it’d be the “room with the hammock”. Haha. I also played a lot of cards…we had a huge Rummy tournament going on.
In between napping and eating, I did manage to do some work. One night we hiked to the river (down a horrible hill which was had to come back up…in the dark) and saw a motherload of stuff. Huge tadpoles, a giant cane toad (ugliest thing ever), a few snakes, salamanders, and glass frogs! Those are the cute little guys, one of which is featured in the header picture for this blog (that one’s stolen from the internet though). They have transparent bellies, so when you turn them over, you can see all their internal organs and even its heart beating! And they make this adorable “cheep” noise, sort of like a bird or a bell.
So that was my week with the civilized. Now its back to Base Camp for another week, but since I’ve already sampled from every single river/stream within walking distance, there isn’t much to do in the way of data collecting. Guess its time to work on my tan…
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- patio area with hammocks
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- mi casa for a week
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- views from BA
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- sitting ON TOP of all the bags for the ride back up to base camp…sweetest ride ever
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- cute little frog that we spent hours trying to determine what species it was
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- big ugly cane toad
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- coral snake…very poisonous
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- see its heart?
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- glass froggie!
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- vampire bat…and to imagine i could’ve been doing this if i hadn’t changed my project at the last minute
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- one of the logs we had to cross going over a river
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- view of the surrounding landscape
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- coffee beans!
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- all the guys fishing for tadpoles for me while i watched, haha
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- coffee farm
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- the room where we stayed for a week
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- headquarters: included office and eating area
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- where we ate
July 7, 2009
At the halfway mark
Another week is almost over, which means I’ll be heading out to another camp tomorrow. This time I’ll be going to Buenos Aires (BA), which is a small village half an hour jeep ride down the mountain (about 1.5 hour hike). The local Hondurans who work for us are from there and many of them make the trek up everyday. BA will be a nice change of scenery, since Base Camp is quickly becoming older and more mundane the longer I stay here. Plus, BA has a “restaurant” where they serve chicken and fries! That’s where we’ll be eating for the week, and although our menu is pre-fixed by Opwall, I heard we’ll be eating chicken twice during the week. Oh joy! There’s also little shops where you can by candy and other foodstuffs, so I’ll probably load up and stash it away for the remainder of my trip. And of course, I’ll be collecting more tadpoles and froggies to test.
On the note of frogs, there were some interesting developments that happened in the last few days. Yesterday, we hiked down to one of the rivers further down the mountain. The high school kids came with us, and while they were splashing around in the pools and flicking each other with water, we found a HUGE tadpole in shallows. This one was a giant compared to the other ones we’ve found, at least 5 times the size of “normal” tadpoles. Whereas most have been the size of a fingernail, this one easily stretched across the palm of my hand and looked more like a small fish.
No, it wasn’t a mutant, but just another species that we haven’t caught yet this year. It was a Rana maculata, and the adult is biggest frog species known in this park, usually about 1-2 hands big. That find was definitely the highlight of the walk, although getting to wade and splash around in the river was pretty invigorating too.
This is part of the river that we were at. Gorgeous isn’t it?
Cool thing #2: I dissected a frog earlier (the one that jumped in the fire and killed itself) and found its belly full of eggs! They were all yellow and caviar-looking, both sad and cool at the same time.
Cool thing #3: This doesn’t have anything to do with frogs, but was awesome nonetheless. Joe, one of the head guys here left (for good, as in this was his last year here) and we had a party for him. And party= barbecue=meat! (and other yummy foods). Because this was “extra” stuff outside normal Opwall budget, we all pitched in a little money to pay for ourselves and the guides and cooks, and we all enjoyed a nice meal of beef, sausage and fried plantains. I loooove plantains, especially when they’re deep fried in sugar and all gooey and soft inside. Yummy yummy…I’m going to look up a recipe when I get home, although I’ll probably have to use bananas since plantains are pretty rare in the US. So it was a pretty festive night last night, we left the generator on for longer than normal and had music blasting from some iPod speakers. It felt weirdly “normal” and “clubby” even though we were surrounded by dense forest and in the middle of nowhere. If you had transplanted us to the UK, I think we would’ve fit right in the middle of a pub crowd.
Ok…so I’m off again for another week. Write again when I get back!
July 4, 2009
Happy Independence Day!
Down here in the tropical jungle, amidst revolting Hondurans and (possibly still bitter) British, the 4th goes by mainly unnoticed, save for the few Americans who are here. Our little form of celebration consisted of finally getting meat in the form of hamburgers and hot dogs. Walter, a wealthy local who comes up to camp to sell souvenirs, brought a grill and barbeque-ing stuff with him today. He probably made quite a profit selling $5 hamburgers and $3 hot dogs, and enough people here are craving non-bean protein that it all got eaten pretty quickly. At any rate, I’m satisfied, although I will miss the fireworks, whether at the neighborhood party at home or the huge extravaganza in NYC (whew, what an adventure that was last year!).
This past week has been pretty boring, given that there’s not much to do at Base Camp and most of the friends I made on jungle training have left (for home or other camps). Some excitement came in the form of a school group, who’s here for a week. Except when I saw excitement, its more like annoyance (sometimes) cause these “school children” are 17-18 year old high school boys. They have a huge influence on the atmosphere of the camp: when they’re off hiking, its quite and peaceful, when they’re back, its loud and rowdy. My tent is right in the middle of a bunch of theirs and they have the weirdest conversations at night and early in the morning. I don’t think they realize the tents aren’t soundproof. I mean, imagine…high school boys… But at least they make this place a little livelier.
Today also marks exactly one month until I come home. I can’t believe one month has passed already…the past few weeks have gone by so quickly! My research is coming along nicely, which is a blessing and a relief. It makes me almost excited to write my thesis, hehe. In other news, my medical school app is finally complete! I got a request from Columbia to fill in their secondaries the other day, so that’s something else I will be working on. Please pray for diligence in doing that as well, as I tend to procrastinate horribly with these things.
(PS. Since I’m quickly becoming obsessed with cute little frogs, I had the crazy idea of getting one as a pet next year. Opinions, Spelman roomates?)
July 3, 2009
salamanders, tadpoles, and frogs oh my!
Duellmanohyla soralia, aka the red-eyed stream frog. I took soooo many pictures of these little guys, they’re so cute!
These are tadpoles of the same species. This pool was just full of them, you could just reach in and scoop some out.
Halfway between a tadpole and a frog…look at its little forelegs still tucked in under its face! The big gaping thing at the top is its mouth, missing all its teeth rows. That’s either because a) it has chytrid or b) they lose their teeth as they morph.
At this point, I got a little too snap-happy and started playing around with the frog.
There it is on my computer. I think he liked it better than me.
He’s reading my guide on how to dissect a frog. How morbid.
And then he decided to jump onto the screen. I think he was attracted by a picture of himself (that’s the one that’s highlighted on the screen).
At this point, someone brought in another frog for me to look at. This is a Craugastor rostralis (no idea what the common name is).
Unfortunately, it was injured. 
See the tear in its skin? You can see the bone underneath. Poor thing… could be disease, predation, or just plain bad luck.
June 23, 2009
at the quarter mark
Two weeks have passed. That’s ¼ of the way done! Some people are going home today, and I envy them for their warm beds, hot showers, and good food that they’ll have soon. As for me, I’ll be heading out to a satellite camp called Cantilles tomorrow, so I won’t have internet for a week. It’s supposed to be really cold out there, cause it’s the camp at the highest elevation. I’ll be hunting for tadpoles and frogs there as well, so hopefully I’ll come back with a large collection of samples.
Project Chytrid (thesis) has finally started full force. Jon (my field advisor) took us to the river near Base Camp yesterday morning to catch tadpoles. A few of us went out armed with fish nets, trying to peer into the clear water and find dots of black hidden in the leaf litter. I realized it would’ve been a lot easier if we were wearing waders, or at least took off our shoes. But we did manage to catch quite a few, although none of them were by me. I just stood there with my swabs and little vials of alcohol and swabbed the ones that other people caught, haha.
some of the tadpoles we caught
this is what swabbing a tadpole looks like. tiny tiny tiny
close up of the underside of a tadpole. the open part on top is the mouth, which is where i have to swab. the black lines are the teeth rows, which are pretty intact on this one. chytrid fungus tends to erode these teeth rows, so thats an easy way to guess if specimens are infected.
On the way back from the river, Jon also caught a snake. It was a vine snake that was sitting on a leaf right next to the path. I think I walked right past it without noticing, with it sitting not one foot away from my face. There was a bit of snake wrestling since Jon accidently picked it up by its tail (number one rule in catching a snake: don’t EVER hold it by its tail. Jon was also the guy to get helicopter lifted out last year due to a snake bite…that’s pretty funny in retrospect).
this is jon with the snake
close up of the vine snake
Btw, I’m soooo sick of beans. Beans and rice, beans and tortilla, beans and vegetables….aaaah, no more beans! Almost every single conversation we have around here inevitably comes back to the topic of food. We’re simply starving for some good hearty meat, fried chicken, steak….mmmmmm. The one saving grace just may be the coffee. Right down the mountain there’s a huge coffee plantation, which is how most of the locals earn their livelihood. The Honduran coffee is nothing like the stuff in the US. It’s much more rich, with almost a chocolately expresso taste. I can drink it black and its not too bad, but best with two spoons of sugar and a lump of (powdered) milk. Soooo good, but it makes me pee a lot. I’ll probably bring a bag back.
OK…more updates when I get back in a week!
June 21, 2009
The past few days I’ve mostly been doing lab work, so not too exciting stuff. We finally did start getting tadpoles in (I didn’t collect them, someone else brought them in), so I’ve been swabbing them. There’s a picture of one below. Each is maybe the size of a baby’s pinky, and to get a good DNA swab, I have the get the inside of their mouths. There’s slippery and floppy, tiny and hard to catch, so put all those together and getting a good swab isn’t the easiest thing in the world. But it’s fun nonetheless. At least I finally feel like I’m getting somewhere.
It’s been raining everyday the past few days. And they still say that this is a dry period. Supposedly, its normal for it to rain twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I guess that’s why it’s called a rain forest, haha.
these butterflies always collect around the water filter. they have a really neat abstract painting type of wing pattern.
the stinkhorn mushroom that we found. if you look closely, there's a fly on the side, and it lands in the sticky stuff in the middle, flies to another and transfers spores (like a pollinator)
an opposum that the mammal team caught in one of their traps. so cute!
the lizard that we caught on one of our walks
June 17, 2009
start of week 2
The internet is still ridiculously slow. Apparently, there’s a daily quota for how much stuff (dunno the technical term for it) can be sent, and we seem to be maxing it out by lunchtime. I’m trying to do the bare minimum of just emailing and blogging right now. So sorry if I’m not checking your blogs, cause it simply takes an hour to load one page.
My daily schedule has definitely experienced a major reversal from what it typically is (at school). Because we run on a generator (which isn’t on all the time), and the sun sets around 6:30, I pretty much get up and go to bed w/ the sun. When its dark, its really dark, and there’s only the light from our head lamps, so there’s not much you can do anyway. Usually my morning starts between 6:30-7 and I’m usually in bed by 9 pm. Typically every night here at Base Camp, there’s an “activity” at 7:30. The first few days we were here, there were talks (ie. lectures) on the various projects that are going on. The past two nights, we’ve been having movie night. I’m watching Zoolander right now, haha. (I’m writing this at 8 pm on Tuesday. I’ve taken to writing up these blog entries in Word and then copy pasting when the internet finally works, so sorry for the time confusions.)
I went on my first herp walk yesterday (herp=herpetology, which is the study of reptiles and amphibians). The way sampling is done is there are various transects (paths) that extend out from camp, and walks are made systematically each week down each transect to find herps. This means each walk needs to be timed and has to happen around the same time each day (late morning), to control for temperature, rainfall, etc. Yesterday, we didn’t really find any signs of animals (except for a beetle grub and many many insects, which don’t count in my mind), which was kind of disappointing, considering we were out for 3 hours. But on the way back, one of the scientists managed to catch a lizard. This catch is considered an “opportunistic” one, since it wasn’t found during the actual time of sampling. I still haven’t seen my froggies yet.
Ok…off to do some DNA stuff now. I think we’re going to hunt for mushrooms and do extractions on those. I’m sitting in on the first day of the DNA class, just cause they want the dissertation students to know how the lab works.
(I’m in the process of uploading some photos. Will post the link as soon as that’s done.)
